The Many Sins of Cris De Feaux (Lords of Disgrace 3)

‘Up through the village and then we turn north on to the headland above Barbary Combe House. There’s a wonderful view from up there.’

It was not her aunt’s favourite, that had always been the prospect from Black Edge Head to the south, but Tamsyn knew she was far too tactful to take them to the scene of Jory’s final confrontation with the militia.

‘Mrs Perowne.’ Dr Tregarth stepped out into the street as they passed him. ‘A word in your ear, if I may. I did not want to worry your aunts.’ He cast a rapid glance at the retreating sedan chair party.

‘We will ride on,’ Cris said with a nod to Gabriel.

‘No.’ Tregarth held up a restraining hand. ‘I think it would be a good thing if you heard this, too, Mr Defoe. There is word going around that Jory Perowne’s gang is active again. They say the sign of the silver hand has been chalked up on walls, even on the door of the Revenue’s building in Barnstaple.’

‘That’s impossible.’ Tamsyn bit back the rest of the words that sprang to her lips and made herself think calmly. ‘I suppose someone could be using the old name, the sign. This is what that objectionable Mr Ritchie was hinting at the other day, I suppose.’

‘There is more.’ Tregarth looked up at her, his face serious under the brim of his low-crowned hat. ‘There are not only rumours, there is speculation as well. People are asking if the Silver Hand is operating again, and who is leading it?’

‘I have no idea. Jory had no lieutenant. A second in command, yes, but no one who could take control of a gang like that.’ Then Cris’s intake of breath, the earnest expression on the doctor’s face, made her realise what Tregarth was worried about. ‘They think it is something to do with me? That is preposterous. Smugglers would not take orders from a woman.’

‘They might from Jory Perowne’s woman.’

‘No.’ She jerked Foxy’s head round, used her heel and sent him cantering up the street towards the vanishing picnic party. The Silver Hand gang working again? It was impossible. Surely she would know if someone with Jory’s skills and deviousness and leadership had set up the network again anywhere near here. But all she could be certain of was that it was not her leading even one rowing boat, let alone a gang. Yet if someone who knew her as well as Dr Tregarth could look at her with that question in his eyes, then others might think it, too. People who were far more dangerous than a friendly village doctor.

Pounding hooves caught up with Foxy before she reached the others. Cris and Gabriel fell in, one on either side of her, and she reined in to a walk. She did not want to talk about this within earshot of the aunts.

‘Silver Hand gang?’ Cris asked.

‘Jory had inherited a silver charm. A hand, about two inches long, broken off a religious statue by the look of it. The story was that it was a relic from the Armada shipwrecks, found by an ancestor who had a ring fixed to it and who wore it round his neck on a chain. When Jory inherited it he wore it, too.’ She remembered it hanging against his chest, the silver chain glinting through the curling dark hair. When he had been feeling defiant—which was often—he would wear it outside his shirt, answering questions about it with the bland assurance that it was simply an heirloom and it wasn’t his fault if people used it as a symbol.

‘It became part of the mythology around him,’ she continued. Trust Jory to have to be dramatic. ‘The men would chalk a hand on casks when they left them on doorsteps, so people knew who to thank for the gifts the gang left in return for silence. Not that anyone would have betrayed Jory and the others. When the Revenue put up posters advertising a reward, someone would always scrawl the hand over it.’

‘And where is it now?’ Gabriel’s question jerked her out of her memories.

‘He was wearing it when… It was round his neck that day.’ She had seen it in that moment when he had turned to face her, the moment she realised now was when he had made up his mind to jump and save them both the horror of a trial and an execution. If only she’d had his courage, could have stayed strong and defiant, not collapsed with shock and lost the only thing she had left of him.

‘You wouldn’t need the actual object,’ Cris said thoughtfully, jerking her out of her memories. ‘Not with something so well known. I suppose there isn’t another, it would be unique.’

It was a question. ‘There is another,’ she admitted. ‘Jory had a replica made for me as a wedding gift.’ Other women get earrings, a pretty gown, flowers from their lover. I get a smuggler’s talisman. ‘But it isn’t the same as his. He had our names engraved on mine, with a heart and an anchor.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Locked up in the strongbox with the legal papers and our bits of jewellery. I am not wearing it next to my heart, if that is what you want to know.’

‘I know you are not.’ Cris’s whisper made the blush come back like the flooding tide. ‘But it might be a good idea to get it hidden away somewhere a search party couldn’t find it. The Riding Officer might see it as a sign of guilt, not as a love token.’

‘Yes, I suppose you are right, but I cannot believe they would take it as far as searching the house.’ But they had when Jory was alive. It had become almost a routine, tidying up after a party of Revenue men, or the militia, had rummaged in the cellars, the attics, under the beds, through the haystacks.

The ground beneath the horses’ hooves began to level out. They were through the trees and at the edge of the clifftop pasture now and off to the left was the head of the path that she and Cris had climbed the night before.

‘We are right above the house, surely?’ Gabriel stood in his stirrups to look down.

‘It is the only way up unless you are on foot. There are few rabbit holes up here—too many buzzards keeping them down—so we can gallop.’ She turned Foxy off the track and gave him his head. Behind her she heard the sound of the other two horses in pursuit. Foxy, excited by the competition, stretched out his head and she laughed aloud with the thrill of it as they thundered across the clifftop.

They were neck and neck, the three of them, as she reined in. ‘Take care now, it dips down to the next stream, we’d best turn back.’

They trotted behind Gabriel, who spurred his bay into a gallop again. ‘Are we climbing our cliff path tonight?’ Cris asked.

‘Or…’ She blushed saying it, it seemed so forward. ‘I could come to you. I was thinking about it this morning.’ More blushes when he sent her a swift, smiling look. ‘Your room is so isolated, no one would know.’

‘And the bed is softer,’ Cris agreed, his face perfectly composed. Ahead across the clifftop they could see the picnic party flapping out rugs, setting up the folding chair that had been strapped on the pack pony. Cris leaned across, caught her round the waist one-handed, and dropped a rapid, searing kiss on her lips. ‘And I am not. Softer, that is.’

‘Cris!’ She was still laughing, and still flushed, when they reached the others.